The shift was drawing to an end in the squad room when Anik took the call from Essex. Barry Cooper had been found. The local force had him under covert observation while they waited for two Armed Response Vehicles to be rallied, briefed and arrive at the address. Ridley’s team had time to join them if they fancied being in on the showdown. It was their case, after all.

As Ridley swept through the squad room and headed for the car park, he didn’t even bother to ask where Jack was.

Jack listened to generic acoustic music as he waited for Maggie to come to the phone. He stood, fixed to the spot, looking across the road of a dustbin-lined terraced street, at one specific house which had the lounge light on and a TV flickering away in the far corner of the room. All around him dogs barked, men shouted at a football match on TV, women talked loudly in various languages and the wonderful aroma of foreign cooking filled the air. This part of Whitechapel had been up and coming for a while but it felt as if it still had a way to go.

“I have two minutes,” Maggie said.

“I’m sorry, Mags. I’m so sorry for walking out on you at Mum and Dad’s. I can’t explain what happened. Not yet. I just . . . Please be patient with me, because I’m nearly there. Honestly.”

Maggie was economical with her words. She had two minutes and she wasn’t joking.

“I love you, Jack Warr, and I will always be here for you. Tomorrow morning, when I get home, I want breakfast in bed and a cuddle regardless of how bad I smell. And when you get home in the evening, you’re taking me out because I’ve got tomorrow night off. Now I have to go.”

Jack smiled as he put his phone away and headed toward the house he’d been watching.

Eddie Rawlins opened his front door like someone not to be messed with. Tall and with a broad set of shoulders for a man in his late 70s, he had a furrowed face from a lifetime of too many frowns and too few smiles. His deep resonating voice—“What?”—completed the picture of an old East End ex-con who’d earned his stripes.

But when Eddie focused on Jack’s face, all of his bravado vanished. His shoulders slumped and he stepped back, suddenly diminished. His face drained to white, his mouth gaped, his eyebrows shot up and his eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“S-sorry, sorry,” Eddie stuttered as he forced a quivering smile. “For a minute there, I thought you was . . . Well, you reminded me of a man I used to know.”

Chapter 27

Eddie refilled his whisky glass and poured one for Jack. As they silently sipped their single malt, Jack felt something he’d never really felt before. He felt feared. Eddie feared him. Not strictly true, of course—Eddie feared the man he thought he saw for a moment standing at his front door, before he remembered that Harry Rawlins was dead.